The team, which also includes scientist Amber Koch, University of Hawaii marine biologist James M. Anderson, State University of New York Cobleskill assistant professor Chip Cotton and Florida State University Coastal and Marine Lab Associate Director of Research Dean Grubbs, described Squalus hawaiiensis, also known as the Hawaiian spurdog.

Similar to research done in the discovery earlier this year of the new species Genie’s Dogfish, the team analyzed the physical characteristics and DNA makeup of the Hawaiian spurdog species. The dogfish was compared to its nearby counterpart, the Japanese S. mitsukurii, known as the shortspine spurdog. The researchers discovered a difference in dorsal fin size and interdorsal length. Whole specimens and tissue samples from S. mitsukurii were analyzed from both prior collections and the current day.

Dogfish sharks are biologically cryptic, difficult to physically tell apart due to their shared adaptation to the deep-sea environment over hundreds of millions of years. This can lead to misclassifications. But recent genetic research, combined with conventional tools, is allowing marine biologists to discover new species and re-describe old ones with more accurate data to help with conservation efforts.

“The whole reason we study biodiversity is because we know the more diverse the environment, the more diverse genetically an animal is, the healthier the population or species is,” Daly-Engel said.

The discovery of the Hawaiian spurdog can lead to better conservation of the species to protect the area’s biodiversity, she said.

“There aren’t that many sharks in Hawaii, and now that we know there’s one that is there and potentially nowhere else in the world, we can take steps to protect it if it becomes vulnerable to overfishing,” Daly-Engel added.

MELBOURNE, FLA. — Scientists and researchers from around Florida will discuss the latest efforts to fix the ailing Indian River Lagoon as Florida Institute of Technology’s Indian River Lagoon Research Institute convenes its fourth annual Technical Conference on Coastal Water Quality on Friday, Sept. 28.

The conference is open to the public but registration is required.

It begins with opening remarks at 9 a.m. in the Hartley Room on the second floor of the Denius Student Center. Featuring keynote speakers, oral presentations and a posters reception, the daylong conference will explore five themes:

Combating coastal degradation

Muck removal and control

Novel approaches to water quality improvements

Policy, permitting and planning, governance

Restoration techniques

The keynote presentation begins at 9:15 a.m., with oral presentations and shorter “tech teasers” offered from 12:15–12:45 p.m. Lunch is served from 12:50-1:40 p.m. Additional oral presentations are held from 1:40-4:30 p.m., and the posters reception is from 4:45-5:45 p.m.

Presentations include innovative techniques to remove muck; methods to replace plastic utilized in oyster reef restoration; enhanced septic tank technologies; defining indicators for the health of the Indian River Lagoon; comparing hydrodynamic characteristics of oyster reefs of different ages; climate based vulnerability assessments; and septic policies for the Indian River Lagoon.

The keynote speaker is Lew Linker from the Chesapeake Bay Program. His talk will focus on restoration efforts in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The talk will discuss the commonalities between the Bay, which is the largest estuary in the United States, and the Indian River Lagoon, and how we can learn from the multi-generational challenges faced in both watersheds.

Conference registration is $50 per person and includes access to all presentations and lunch as well as a ticket to Friday night’s Estuary Affair Dinner starting at 6 p.m. in the Hartley Room. A student registration package is available for $20 but does not include the dinner. Tickets for only the dinner are available for $25.

]]>Florida Tech NewsroomIndian River Lagoon restoration techniques such as oyster mats and reefs will be among the topics discussed at the Indian River Lagoon Research Institute's daylong TechCon set for Friday at Florida Tech. Florida Tech’s Perez Awarded $750K NSF CAREER Grant for Solar Researchhttps://newsroom.fit.edu/2018/07/16/florida-techs-perez-awarded-750k-nsf-career-grant-for-solar-research/
Mon, 16 Jul 2018 13:41:49 +0000https://newsroom.fit.edu/?p=37779August’s Parker Solar Probe Mission to Provide Key Data

MELBOURNE, FLA. — Jean Carlos Perez, an assistant professor of physics and space sciences, has been awarded a five-year, nearly $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s prestigious CAREER program.

The NSF initiative, known fully as the Faculty Early Career Development Program, is among the agency’s most competitive awards. It is given annually to just a handful of early-career faculty “who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization,” according to the NSF.

The grant will fund Perez’s work on the theoretical understanding of solar wind turbulence near the Sun, a topic that will be in the spotlight soon with the Parker Solar Probe mission to be launched from Kennedy Space Center in August.

The probe will, on its final three orbits, fly to within 3.8 million miles of the Sun’s surface – about seven times closer than the current record-holder, the Helios 2 spacecraft, which came within 27 million miles in 1976, according to NASA. Protected by a 4.5-inch thick carbon-composite shield, the craft is expected to survive temperatures approaching 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,552 degrees Fahrenheit).

The Parker Solar Probe will carry four instrument suites designed to study electromagnetic fields, plasma and energetic particles, and close-up images of the Sun and its corona – and Perez is looking forward to studying the data it will produce and comparing them to models and state-of-the-art numerical simulations from his team and collaborators.

His work involves understanding the role plasma turbulence has in the heating of the solar corona, which is the 12,000-mile-high ring of superhot plasma that comprises the upper solar atmosphere. The corona is intriguing because it is far hotter, at about 1 milion degrees Celsius (1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit), than the 5,000-degree Celsius (9,032 degrees Fahrenheit) surface of the Sun.

It is a decades-old puzzle as to why the temperature rises so dramatically from the surface of the Sun to the corona, and why at the same time the density drops dramatically. And then there is the solar wind. The hot corona gives rise to this flow of ionized gases from the Sun that streams past Earth at speeds of more than 500 km per second (about a million miles per hour) but that is so tenuous it would not tousle your hair if you were able to stand in its path.

Perez’s NSF-funded research – to understand the role plasma turbulence plays in the heating of the corona and acceleration of solar wind – will be greatly aided by data from the Parker Solar Probe.

“We are aiming to close the theoretical gap that we have in understanding turbulence in this area,” he said.

MELBOURNE, FLA. — Researchers at Florida Institute of Technology have developed the fastest method to date for creating a key molecule used by neuroscientists at Columbia University in mapping brain activity. They also discovered ways to create two new versions of that molecule – a neurotransmitter called glutamate – that can further advance this critical field of study.

This work, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published in the American Chemical Society journal, ACS Chemical Neuroscience 2018.

“Our molecules to the neuroscientists are as valuable as cameras are to Google Maps,” said Nasri Nesnas, a professor of chemistry at Florida Tech who is the principal investigator and corresponding author of the paper. “We now have the fastest method to make the best cameras.”

Glutamate, or Glu, plays a critical role in brain activities related to emotion, cognition and memory. Therefore, neuroscientists are working to decode the brain to understand neurological disorders including depression and dementia, in part by studying “glutamatergic receptors,” where Glu is the molecule of interest.

The human brain is the most complex organ in the human body and is composed of over 85 billion neurons. Each of these neurons can be linked through up to 10,000 connections, known as synapses. Synaptic connections act like brain “switches” and release small molecules called neurotransmitters that pass along electrical signals.

Glu is the most common neurotransmitter. To aid neuroscientists in mapping the enormously complex brain circuitry, researchers have used light to activate inactive, or “caged,” neurotransmitters in live brain tissue, including glutamate.

The work reported on in ACS Chemical Neuroscience will make the process of making caged Glu more effective, Nesnas said, by cutting the number of steps in half and overall time by 80 percent, while doubling the yields of previous methods.

“There were challenges that many scientists had with making these photo-responsive Glu tools. We have made this process more facile and efficient, and we also made two other variations of these tools that have the potential to perform better since they may not pose the same interference problems that the previous one had with other receptors on neurons,” Nesnas said.

Graduate student Charitha Guruge, the lead author of the paper and one of four Florida Tech Ph.D. students involved in the research – Yannick Ouedraogo, Richard Comitz and Jingxuan Ma are the other collaborators – said he is excited about developing tools that should lead to better understanding of – and thus possible cures for – some of the most perplexing and damaging ailments of our time.

“I find working in this area to be truly rewarding, since there are too many neurological disorders, especially those relating to depression, dementia and bipolar, far from being understood,” he said. “I would like to be able to use chemistry to develop these tools to help the neuroscience community reach answers quickly.”

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]]>Florida Tech NewsroomCharitha Guruge, a Ph.D. student at Florida Institute of Technology, places a sample of an inactive, or “caged,” version of the neurotransmitter glutamate in a photo reactor. The UV lamps in the reactor activate the neurotransmitter, which is a key tool for neuroscientists to use in mapping the enormously complex brain circuitry.Higgs Boson, Top Quarks Linked For First Time in New Collider Researchhttps://newsroom.fit.edu/2018/06/13/higgs-boson-top-quarks-linked-for-first-time-in-new-collider-research/
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 15:14:15 +0000https://newsroom.fit.edu/?p=37592Florida Tech Physicists Involved in Milestone Discovery

MELBOURNE, FLA. — An observation made by an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider involving Florida Institute of Technology physicists Francisco Yumiceva, Marcus Hohlmann and Marc Baarmand has for the first time connected the two heaviest elementary particles of the Standard Model.

Using the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector, which acts as a giant, high-speed camera taking 3-D ‘photographs’ of particle collisions from all directions up to 40 million times each second, scientists at the CERN-based collider near Geneva, Switzerland, announced findings that reveal how strongly the Higgs boson interacts with the heaviest known elementary particle, the top quark.

The measurements from the CMS team and another collaboration known as ATLAS indicate the Higgs boson has a critical role in the large value of the top quark mass. While this is certainly a key feature of the Standard Model – the overarching theory in physics that describes the basic components of matter and the forces that govern their interactions – this is the first time it has been verified experimentally with what one spokesman called “overwhelming significance.”

In the Standard Model, the Higgs boson can couple to particles called fermions. Electrons and protons that make regular atoms are examples of fermions. The heaviest known fermion is the top quark. Generally, scientists can measure the coupling strength of the Higgs boson to fermions by measuring the decay rate of the Higgs boson to other lighter particles. But because the Higgs boson cannot decay into a pair of top quarks, the only way to measure this coupling is to study the production of a Higgs boson in associations with top quarks.

“This is the first time these events have been observed in our detector,” said Yumiceva, a long-term member of the CMS collaboration. “We have seen the interaction of the Higgs boson with other particles but never with the heaviest particle of all, the top quark.”

“We were not expecting to have this result so soon,” Yumiceva said, adding that the findings were achieved due to the availability of excellent experimental data as well as the use of sophisticated analysis methods that ensure that the required statistical precision could be reached.

In addition to Yumiceva, Hohlmann and Baarmand, the Florida Tech team in CMS also includes recent graduate Vallary Bhopatkar, postdoctoral research scientists Stefano Colafranceschi and Daniel Noonan, and numerous undergraduate and graduate students. The group is heavily involved in two major detector upgrades, and several data analyses to measure precisely the properties of the Higgs boson and top quark particles.

It was nearly six years ago, on 4 July 2012, when ATLAS and CMS reported independently the discovery of the Higgs boson. The announcement created headlines worldwide: the discovery confirmed the existence of the last missing elementary particle of the Standard Model, half a century after the Higgs boson was predicted theoretically. At the same time, the discovery marked also the beginning of an experimental program to determine the properties of the newly discovered particle.

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]]>CERNThis is the magnet in the Compact Muon Solenoid detector. Scientists from Florida Tech and elsewhere used the CMS to reveal how strongly the Higgs boson interacts with the top quark. (Photo courtesy of CERN.)Some Coral Reefs Keep Up with Sea-Level Rise, Research Findshttps://newsroom.fit.edu/2018/05/09/some-coral-reefs-keep-up-with-sea-level-rise-research-finds/
Wed, 09 May 2018 15:09:10 +0000https://newsroom.fit.edu/?p=37446Florida Tech Study Analyzes
Reefs’ Building Capacity

MELBOURNE, FLA. — Rising sea-level is threatening island nations that are no more than 3 feet above the high-tide line, but a new study has found that healthy coral reefs may be able to keep up and thus protect these vulnerable areas.

The findings from Florida Institute of Technology biology professor Rob van Woesik, published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, are based on an extensive field study in Palau and Yap in Micronesia.

Building sea walls on tropical coasts to keep out the ocean is a substantial economic investment for small-island nations. “We know that coral reefs naturally build walls of limestone, and we found that some healthy reefs could produce enough of the material to keep up with sea-level rise under moderate climate change,” van Woesik said.

He added, “Coral reefs, however, will not be able to keep pace with sea-level rise under rapid climate change, or business-as-usual, which is what’s occurring today.”

“We also found that nearshore reefs produce less limestone than reefs in other habitats, such as in lagoons and outer barrier reefs, so the nearshore reefs are most vulnerable to sea-level rise.”

These results stress the need to reduce land-based pollution and sediment as the climate continues to change.

“Damaged coral reefs do not have the capacity to keep up with sea-level rise, inflicting a large economic burden on the coastal societies to build sea walls,” van Woesik added.

This study emphasizes a need to protect nearshore reefs as sea-level rise continues. Where coral reefs cannot keep up with sea-level rise, natural storm barriers will disappear, resulting in the loss of habitable land for millions of people worldwide.

]]>Florida Tech NewsroomThis healthy inner reef near Palau shows exceptionally luxuriant coral growth and good carbonate production. New research finds that healthy reefs such as this one may be able to keep up with rising sea levels.Marine Protected Areas May Fail as Ocean Temperatures Risehttps://newsroom.fit.edu/2018/05/07/marine-protected-areas-may-fail-as-ocean-temperatures-rise/
Mon, 07 May 2018 17:31:05 +0000https://newsroom.fit.edu/?p=37412The Year 2050 Could Be When Ocean Areas Become Uninhabitable

MELBOURNE, FLA. — The sanctuary afforded by Marine Protected Areas is no match for warming ocean temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions, new research from Florida Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina has found. The devastation from these disrupted ecosystems could lead to extinctions of some of the world’s iconic animals, a drastic loss of biodiversity, and catastrophic changes to oceanic food-webs.

The research, “Climate change threatens the world’s marine protected areas,” was published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. You can find the article here.

It reports that most marine life in Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) will not be able to tolerate warming ocean temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The greatest risk is to MPAs in the Antarctic and Arctic, in the northwest Atlantic, and newly designated reserves in the Galápagos Islands. The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary has already seen a substantial proportion of its corals succumb to bleaching and infectious diseases, both of which are related to high ocean temperatures.

“With warming of this magnitude, we expect to lose many, if not most, animal species from Marine Protected Areas by the turn of the century,” said lead author John Bruno, a biologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

MPAs have been established as havens to protect polar bears, penguins, corals and other marine life from human activities such as fishing and oil extraction. The study found that with continued ‘business-as-usual’ emissions, the protections won’t help: By the year 2100, warming and reduced oxygen concentration in the water—an impact of warming—will make the MPAs uninhabitable by most species living in them.

The study, which was supported by the US National Science Foundation, is a collaborative effort among ocean scientist Rich Aronson from Florida Tech; Bruno from the University of North Carolina; Steven Amstrup, chief scientist of Polar Bears International; and scientists from other institutions in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. It predicts that under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 emissions scenario, known as the business-as-usual scenario, MPAs will warm an average of 2.8 degrees Celsius (or 5 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.

The study also estimated the year in which Marine Protected Areas in different regions would cross critical thresholds beyond which most species wouldn’t be able to tolerate the change. For many areas in the tropics, this will happen as soon as the middle of the 21st century.

“There has been a lot of talk about establishing marine reserves to buy time while we figure out how to confront climate change,” Aronson said. “We’re out of time, and the fact is we already know what to do: We have to control greenhouse gas emissions.”

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]]>Florida Tech NewsroomWarming ocean temperatures could harm Marine Protected Areas, new research finds, thus disrupting ecosystems and the animals that live within them, such as polar bears.
New Species of Shark Discovered Through Genetic Testinghttps://newsroom.fit.edu/2018/04/10/using-genetic-testing-scientists-discover-new-shark-species/
Tue, 10 Apr 2018 13:42:42 +0000https://newsroom.fit.edu/?p=36524The Atlantic Sixgill Remains a
Mysterious, Deep-Sea Dweller

MELBOURNE, FLA. — A team of scientists led by Florida Institute of Technology’s Toby Daly-Engel has confirmed after decades of uncertainty that sixgill sharks residing in the Atlantic Ocean are a different species than their counterparts in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The new species has a new name: the Atlantic sixgill shark.

With ancestors dating back over 250 million years, well before dinosaurs, sixgill sharks are among the oldest creatures on Earth. Yet the fact that they reside at extreme ocean depths, sometimes thousands of feet below the surface, has made them especially challenging to study.

Using 1,310 base pairs of two mitochondrial genes, Daly-Engel, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Florida Tech, and colleagues from MarAlliance in Belize, Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory in Teresa, Florida, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Panama City, determined there are enough genetic differences between what had long been considered a single species, Hexanchus nakamurai, to rename the Atlantic variety Hexanchus vitulus.

“We showed that the sixgills in the Atlantic are actually very different from the ones in the Indian and Pacific Oceans on a molecular level, to the point where it is obvious that they’re a different species even though they look very similar to the naked eye,” Daly-Engel said.

Their findings were reported this week in the online edition of the journal Marine Biodiversity. Click here for the PDF.

Measuring up to 6 feet in length, Atlantic sixgill sharks are far smaller than their Indo-Pacific relatives, which can grow to 15 feet or longer. They have unique, saw-like lower teeth and six gill slits, as their name suggests. Most sharks have five gill slits.

With their new classification, Atlantic sixgill sharks will now have a better chance at long-term survival, Daly-Engel noted.

“Because we now know there are two unique species, we have a sense of the overall variation in populations of sixgills. We understand that if we overfish one of them, they will not replenish from elsewhere in the world,” she said.

And that’s the other benefit of this research: a better understanding of shark diversity.

MELBOURNE, FLA. — New research from Florida Institute of Technology finds that fish born in marine reserves where fishing is prohibited grow to be larger, healthier and more successful at reproduction.

The findings, recently published in the online journal Plos One, highlight the positive impact of a tool of fisheries management that has long been a source of frustration and concern for fishermen, who believe such restrictions impinge on their livelihood.

In their examination of marine reserves, also known as marine protected areas or MPAs, around coral reefs in the Philippines, Robert Fidler, a Fulbright scholar who recently received his Ph.D. from Florida Institute of Technology, and his major professor, Fulbright faculty scholar Ralph Turingan, found evidence that MPAs in fact helped to produce and maintain the more desirable large-bodied and older fish within populations that have been fished by local fishermen for centuries.

“The first reaction to marine reserves by local users is traditionally, ‘You close all of these fishing areas and we can’t fish anymore in there,’” Turingan said. “That is the wrong way to think. These MPAs are actually important is sustaining fishing activities.”

And, Turingan added, “Our evidence shows this is a long-term thing.”

Fidler, Turingan and their collaborators found that key life-history traits in three coral-reef fishes – maximum length, growth rate, and body size and age at sexual maturity – are significantly improved in the brown surgeonfish, lined bristletooth and manybar goatfish living within MPAs compared with the same species outside of MPAs.

Because fishing removes the largest fish, heavy fishing on coral reefs drives the fish to mature at younger ages and smaller sizes.

Small fish have fewer, smaller eggs that, if they survive to hatching, produce weaker fish. By contrast, larger fish produce higher quality eggs, and more of them, which in turn produce healthier fish that grow larger and reproduce more, and the cycle continues.

The researchers found that the more robust fish naturally migrate from the MPAs to the fished areas, where they can be harvested by fishermen.

“It’s like raising them in aquaculture and putting them back, but this is more natural way of replenishing depleted stocks,” Turingan said.

Though their findings were based on studies of coral reef fish in the Philippines, Fidler and Turingan predicted the results could be replicated wherever marine reserves are established on coral reefs.

]]>Florida Tech NewsroomThis lined bristletooth fish is swimming in a marine protected area in the Philippines, where new Florida Tech research has found fish grow healthier than in areas where fishing is allowed.Music, Barbecue and More at Indian River Lagoon Research Institute Benefit March 3https://newsroom.fit.edu/2018/03/01/indian-river-lagoon-research-institute-benefit-set-march-3/
Thu, 01 Mar 2018 17:45:15 +0000https://newsroom.fit.edu/?p=36701Southern Drawl Band to Perform

MELBOURNE, FLA. — Florida Institute of Technology’s Indian River Lagoon Research Institute and the Sebastian Inlet chapter of the Surfrider Foundation will be the beneficiaries of a music-filled evening of entertainment from 6-10 p.m. Saturday, March 3, at the Inlet Oaks Event Center at Sebastian Inlet Surf & Sport.

Presented by the Rotary Club of Melbourne Beach, the 1st Annual Southern Squall with Southern Drawl will offer four hours of southern rock, country rock and trop rock jams courtesy of the Tennessee-based Southern Drawl Band.

There will be barbecue from Charlie and Jake’s and craft beer from Intracoastal Brewing available for purchase.

Guests are encouraged to bring chairs and blankets.

The Indian River Lagoon Research Institute’s Science Bus will be there, as well, offering hands-on experiences and exhibits centered on the lagoon.

Limited parking will be available at the Inlet Oaks Event Center is at 8898 S. Highway A1A, behind Sebastian Inlet Surf & Sport. Additional parking will be offered at the Little Chapel by the Sea, 8240 S. Highway A1A, with complimentary shuttle service to the event venue.

Tickets at $25 in advance and $30 the day of the show for adults and children 13 and older. Children 12 and under are free. Tickets are available at Sebastian Inlet Surf & Sport, Aquarina Beach and Country Club Pro Shop, Oceanside Pizza, Sunnyside Cafe, Melbourne Beach Market or Indialantic Ace Hardware, as well as online at Eventbrite by clicking here.

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]]>2013Tennessee-based Southern Drawl Band will headline the March 3 fundraiser for Florida Tech's Indian River Lagoon Research Institute and the Sebastian Inlet chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.